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12 financial aid questions to ask during your college search

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Students check out an Oregon Health & Science University booth at a recent National College Fair in Portland. This year's fair is scheduled Nov. 1 & 2 at the Oregon Convention Center.
(Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian)

While you can’t apply for federal financial aid until Jan. 1, though, it’s never too early to buff your financial-aid profile as well.

Next weekend’s annual National College Fair at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland is a perfect opportunity. Yes, it’s a chance to scope out schools and leave an impression on admissions staff. Local community colleges and for-profit schools will be there, too.

It’s also a great time to ask pointed questions about cost and aid. Because getting aid is becoming more competitive. More students are applying for federal aid than ever before. Yet this week’s report by The College Board showed that families still are paying more out-of-pocket for college because Pell grants, tax credits and other forms of federal aid have declined.

I’ve written over the past few years a number of columns on boosting your financial aid chances: explaining asset maneuvers, net price calculators, early aid estimates and scholarship searches. You can read those columns, and find other resources, at It's Only Money's college bitly bundle. They’re also listed in the upper right-hand corner of this column.

Whether you’re going to the National College Fair or not, I’ve got a list of questions to consider. It was developed by Jim Eddy, former financial aid director at Willamette University in Salem, and Julia Surtshin, a certified college counselor in Portland who coaches families on college searches.

Here are questions you can ask as you visit with college personnel:

What tuition and fee increases are currently being projected for the next four years? What has been the history of tuition and fee increases during the past four to six years? This will help give you a sense of how much all four years of college will cost. You can also look up a school’s expense history online at the National Center for Educational Statistics’ College Navigator.

Will I need only to file a FAFSA to get financial aid? Or do you require the CSS Profile or other forms? The Free Application for Federal Student Aid doesn’t dig as deeply into your finances as the CSS/Financial Aid Profile. For instance, the FAFSA doesn’t look at home equity or retirement accounts when calculating aid eligibility. The CSS does.

Are you ‘Need Blind’ or ‘Need Aware’ when admitting students? Need Blind schools won’t look at financial need when admitting. Need Aware schools will because of limited aid money on hand.

High school students wander through a past Portland National College Fair at the Portland Convention Center. Hundreds of colleges and universities offer literature and information about schools from all over the nation. Counselors also offer help applying for financial aid and scholarships.Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian

What percentage of your financial aid packages come from grants versus loans? The answer will give you a sense of how much the school extends from its own coffers to students versus how much your family might have to borrow to go to the school. Community colleges and many public universities won’t have much institutional aid to offer.

What priorities do you use when it comes to awarding aid? They can differ from school to school and even from year to year. Many liberal arts schools are looking for males to balance out their female-dominated enrollment. Engineering schools, on the other hand, might be looking for women. Others will be looking to diversify the geographic makeup of their student body.

How do you treat outside scholarships when awarding financial aid? Most colleges will use outside scholarships to replace the portion of costs that students would otherwise have to pay or borrow. But that isn’t always the case. A school could simply use it to offset the money it offers, instead. Best to ask ahead of time.

What average debt amount do your students graduate with? About six in ten undergrads finished four-year nonprofit colleges in 2011-12 with $26,500 in debt, on average, according to The College Board.

What percentage of students take longer than four years to graduate and why? At the University of Oregon in 2010, 44 percent of students earned their bachelor’s within four years, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. About two-thirds graduated in six years. The rates at Oregon’s private schools were slightly better. But the rates at Oregon’s six other 4-year public schools were lower, often markedly so. That could impact your plan for paying for school.

Default rates at for-profit schools, by the way, are sky high. They attracted only 11 percent of 2009-10 college enrollment but 43 percent of fiscal-year 2011 federal loan defaults. Be wary of the value and price of any for-profit institutions, such as career, culinary, online or hair-design schools.

Do you meet demonstrated need or do you ‘gap’ students? Understanding the answer to this requires some background, so bear with me.

Each school has an Estimated Cost of Attendance – the total amount you’ll likely pay for a year’s worth of tuition, supplies, room and board, expenses and travel.

The FAFSA calculates your Expected Family Contribution or EFC – the amount of money the federal government thinks your family can afford to pay toward school. “It might not accurately predict what a family can pay,” notes Eddy, the former Willamette admissions officer. But it’s the system we’ve got.

ECA - EFC = Demonstrated Need. That’s the amount the school must help you cover via federal loans, institutional grants and work-study. Most schools don’t meet all that Demonstrated Need. Reed College in Portland says it does.

“If not, what kind of percentage do you cover,” Eric Delehoy of Delehoy College Counseling in Portland, suggests asking. Your family must come up with that ‘gap’ money some other way.

“It’s a very fair question,” said Eddy, now the assistant financial aid director at the University of Michigan. “Then you know what you’re up against.”

And if the school can’t offer resources to help you make that up, that could be a problem for your family. Better to know that now than in April.

There are other questions: What is your average grant or scholarship award? How many hours per week do students work? Will my financial aid award stay the same all four years as long as I’m enrolled or do you start all over each year?

All worth asking, if not at the fair, soon.

“We’re a little early for students to be doing the actual FAFSA,” said Russell Seidelman, assistant director of financial aid at the University of Portland. “But as far as the planning and preparedness, it really starts now.”

-- Brent Hunsberger welcomes questions about his column or blog. Reach him at 503-221-8359 or at bhunsberger@oregonian.com

Correction: A previous version of this post contained the incorrect title Jim Eddy held while at Willamette University.